


Those Who Hold Our Secrets

by casual_distance



Series: Strangers We Meet [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Introspection, M/M, Pining, Pining Castiel, Season/Series 10, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 18:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6716851
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casual_distance/pseuds/casual_distance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, when Castiel misses them the most, he’ll find a bar.  He likes to pick one he thinks the Dean would enjoy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Those Who Hold Our Secrets

**Author's Note:**

> Set early Season 10. Mentions of the following episodes: 8.17 Goodbye Stranger, 10.01 Black, 9.06 Heaven Can’t Wait, 8.23 Sacrifice

The bar is like any other- dimly lit and smelling of stale beer, cigarette smoke, and piss. However it is nearly empty and the few people present are keeping to themselves. Castiel pauses inside the door briefly before he sits at the bar counter. He requests a beer, as much to blend in as to pretend, and is halfway through it when a woman sits down several stools away. 

She is older with dark skin and dark hair just beginning to grey at the temples. She wears a Polo shirt that is half untucked from faded slacks and bearing the logo of a local grocery store. Her hair is pulled back into a small ponytail that rests low on her neck but small strands have come loose and crinkle around the edges of her face. 

Her soul glows a warm, sparkling gold that makes him think of Dean. She does not shine as vibrantly as he does- no one ever has- but she still flutters with kindness that has been tempered by weariness; Castiel thinks she probably works harder than she should. 

It is not until the woman turns to glare at him that Castiel realizes he has been staring. He feels the heat of embarrassment slide up his neck. 

"I apologize. I don't mean to stare but you remind me of an old friend."

She smiles knowingly at him. "An old girlfriend?" 

The heat intensifies. "No, he's just- I mean, a friend." 

Both her eyebrows rise up incredulously, and Castiel finds himself stuttering until she laughs. She slides her beer down the bar and then scoots over to sit next to him.

She offers her hand. "I'm Jackie." 

"Cas," he answers back and shakes her hand.

“You aren’t from around here.”

Castiel ducks his head slightly. “No. My sister and I- we’re traveling.” He hesitates and then drinks from his beer. Jackie doesn’t push, just nods.

“I was born here. Been here my whole life. Don’t know where else I’d go if I’d go anywhere.” She could sound trapped, sound stagnant, but her face is soft, and the glow of her soul brightens a bit, singing with contentment.

Castiel smiles at her; it is a lovely sight. She seems to pick up on his mood and tells him about her life here. About her family: two brothers- both older, both married and living in different parts of the county; an older aunt who lives down the street from her and for whom she will dog sit while the aunt travels to a local casino; her mother who bakes cakes and pies for their church; her father who is five years gone in the coming months and whom she misses something terrible. Her husband who is one year gone- “Heart attack,” she says with the sadness of the unexpected, her soul dimming- and whom she thinks about all the time.

Castiel finds it easy to talk to her. She smiles warmly and answers his questions with the ease of two friends catching up after a long separation. He is on his second beer and she on her third when she leans forward against the bar, resting her chin in her hand, and studies him.

“What about you? Where’s home?”

Castiel looks down, lifts his beer to drink, studies the condensation ring left behind. He doesn’t know how to answer her. Once Heaven was his home. Once he had a family, many brothers and sisters, a Father who loved him, who cared. Castiel had prayed from habit for a long time, but now sitting in this bar, he can’t remember the last time he did even that.

Now, sitting in this bar, he can’t even tell her he has a home. 

She looks at him sadly, her eyes wide and dark, mouth pulled down. He looks away again, struggling.

“I had a place- I had thought-”

He remembers a voice pushing through the single-minded pull of Naomi’s brainwashing. _We’re family. I need you._

“I had thought I had a home. My friend, he had invited me to stay with him, but… I had to leave, and I don’t know-”

Jackie leans forward to touch his arm, but she stays silent, waiting for him. Castiel sighs.

“We met again, recently, and he-” Castiel stops. He doesn’t know how to explain. He isn’t even sure what it is he hopes for. He remembers his conversation with Hannah about human things, and he remembers the burn of fear of his own mortality, that night with Ephraim, but what he remembers most is watching Dean rock Tanya, pressing the back of his hand to her forehead to check her temperature.

Dean had wandered around Nora’s kitchen, talking to Tanya while he searched for medicine, and Castiel had paused in his clean-up to watch. There had been a moment, sickening, jolting, where he had wanted so fiercely, so fully, that he had choked on it. Saying goodbye to Dean the next morning had hurt, because he had understood then. 

He had understood everything. 

Jackie pulls her hand back, and when he doesn’t say anything more she asks, carefully, “How long have you been friends?”

Castiel looks up at her. “Five years- six.”

“Are you close?”

“We used to be. I used to… work with him. He’s forgiven me for many mistakes. These last few years we’ve been apart more than I would have liked, but our jobs…” Castiel trails off, sighs.

Jackie sighs in commiseration, nods in understanding. “It’s like that sometimes, with certain people. If things were different, if the timing had been better, then who knows?” She shrugs in show. “Those are the hard ones.”

Castiel looks at her, watches her lift her beer to drink. She meets his eyes as she sets the bottle down on the counter and turns a corner of her mouth up in a small smile. 

Castiel returns it and asks, “Did you have someone who…” He trails off and feels embarrassed. “Pardon me; I shouldn’t have asked.”

Jackie laughs softly to herself. “I brought it on myself by bringing it up, but… there was, a long time ago. I knew him in college, and it always seemed one of us was attached, but there was somethin’, you know?” She leans toward Castiel. “I actually hadn’t thought of him in years.”

“So you….” He doesn’t know what he wants to ask, but she does.

“Got over him? I suppose. I met my husband shortly after I dropped out, and he was-“ She sets her chin in her hand as she braces her elbow on the bar counter. “What I had with him was more than I ever had with the other guy.”

Castiel considers this, rolling his beer bottle between his palms. It’s something he’d seen a man in another bar do; the movement is a distraction, but he appreciates the dampness seeping into his skin, the crinkle of the label, the hardness of the glass.

He tries to imagine loving someone other than Dean. He takes the memory of Dean and Tanya and tries to imagine being in a house with someone else, another man, a woman, but he can’t. It stings. It feels like betrayal. 

“I don’t think I want to get over Dean,” Castiel says softly without looking away from his drink.

Next to him Jackie sighs, but she doesn’t say anything. When he looks over, she’s looking at him, the glow of her soul is dimmed- grief edges it; longing pulls it down. Castiel swallows heavily and looks away.

They don’t speak for a while, both finishing their drinks and ordering new ones. A loud laugh cracks through the air and they both look. A man is sitting at the other end of the bar laughing with the bartender. A television above their heads plays a nature show, and suddenly Castiel remembers sitting in a bar with Dean, waiting for a cupid, watching her work.

Jackie’s attention returns to her drink while Castiel watches the man and the bartender talk until the bartender leaves to get a drink for a woman who comes up to the counter. Castiel looks at Jackie to find her watching him. Her soul has eased, the mood passing. 

She smiles at him and asks about his sister. Castiel closes his eyes briefly and accepts the change in conversation with gratitude.

By the time Jackie is smiling easily with her drinks and requesting water instead of more beer, Hannah comes looking for him. The door opens and Castiel looks over his shoulder to see her step into the bar, squinting slightly, her nose wrinkling in distaste. When she catches sight of him, Castiel nods and turns back to Jackie.

“I must go. My sister is here.”

Jackie looks over at Hannah before turning a smile on him. “Good luck, Cas. And don’t- don’t give up hope, okay?”

Castiel looks away, his throat tight. After a moment, he looks back at her. Her face is soft, gentle; the glow of her soul is brighter, calmer. Castiel stands and hugs her. She jerks slightly in surprise before she hugs him back.

Castiel closes his eyes and sends Grace into her. He cannot do much, not like he is, but eases the inflammation in her joints (the start of arthritis he cannot heal), soothes the aches in the arches of her feet and the curve of her spine, gentles the headache that must have been bothering her since she walked into the bar.

In his arms, she is frozen, her breath caught. He pulls back and she stares at him with wide eyes. 

“Thank you,” he says, “for your kindness.”

Hannah sends a questioning look at Jackie when Castiel joins her by the door. Jackie is still staring at him, her mouth dropped open. “What was that about?”

Castiel shakes his head, catches Hannah by the arm to steer her from the bar into the night air. “Nothing.” He pauses. “Human things.”

**Author's Note:**

> “That's the thing about flying: You could talk to someone for hours and never even know his name, share your deepest secrets and then never see them again.” - Jennifer E. Smith, _The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight_


End file.
